This church was the focal point for a multi-year grass-roots project that
united and empowered African Americans, rural and urban, educated and
uneducated, to fight for the right to vote. Butler Chapel AME Zion Church,
an imposing brick building located on a hill west of downtown Tuskegee,
is a prominent landmark in the historically black neighborhood known as
Zion Hill. The building, the second church on this site, was constructed
about 1877. Originally built in wood, the church was sided with brick
in the 1940s. In a 1957 effort to minimize the number of black voters
in Tuskegee, Alabama's municipal elections, the state legislature simply
redrew the town's political districts, placing Tuskegee Institute and
all but a small fraction of black residents outside city limits. To protest
this action, Tuskegee's middle-class black community and Macon County's
poor black citizens joined forces in a seven-year "Crusade for Citizenship."
On June 25, 1957, 3,000 area black residents showed up at Butler Chapel
for the first of many weekly mass meetings. Only 500 attendees could fit
into the church's small sanctuary; the rest listened outside. Charles
Gomillion, a professor at Tuskegee Institute and the driving force of
the black Tuskegee Civic Association, urged the crowd to join a "Trade
with Friends" boycott of local white merchants. "We are going to buy goods
and services from those who help us, from those who make no effort to
hinder us, from those who recognize us as first-class citizens," he promised.
The boycott ended in early 1961 when city boundaries were returned to
their original position, after the Supreme Court ruled that a legislature
could not single out an isolated segment of a racial minority for discriminatory
treatment.

Butler Chapel is located at 1002 N. Church Street in Tuskegee, Alabama. A museum is located in the church basement. Tours can be arranged by calling 334-727-3550, after 1 p.m., or 334-727-3601.